Mid-Year Business Analysis: 2025’s Mixed Results; Coldplay, Shakira, Kendrick Lamar & SZA Have Top Tours

Data shows average grosses & ticket sales up significantly, overall numbers, ticket prices, shows drop.

Pollstar’s 2025 Mid-Year touring charts are a straight-up mixed bag. While it’s encouraging to see the precipitous rise in year-over-year average per-show grosses and ticket sales, it is concerning to see the minus signs before 2025’s mid-year overall gross and ticket sales figures. The latter shows that the larger market is contracting; the former indicates a strong touring market with runs earning on average more revenue and selling more tickets per show than ever.

Certainly, looking at the top three tours on the Mid-year Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart, Coldplay’s “Music of the Spheres,” Shakira’s “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran” and Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “Grand National,” all earning over $100 million well before the concert season moves into its busiest season, are signs of a healthy live market.

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The same could be said of the The Top 100 Tours Worldwide chart’s mid-year’s double-digit increase in average revenue per show at $1,713,557, a whopping 24.9 percent more than 2024’s $1,371,510.

The increase is even more pronounced with ticket sales, as 2025’s per-show average of 14,229 reflects a 32.1 percent jump over the prior year.

Part of the increase in average revenues and attendance can be attributed to venue size, specifically more stadium tours. Indeed, 18 treks in 2025’s mid-year survey had average ticket sales topping 30,000, while in 2024 there were only 11 with an average attendance over that amount.

Some of the increases can also be attributed to more global touring, specifically in the southern hemisphere and particularly in Latin America, Australia, the Middle East and Asia where larger outdoor venues have come online that can host shows in Q1 and Q2’s winter and spring months. This we saw with acts like Coldplay touring in markets like India and Singapore as well as Shakira’s extended plays in Latin America. Today there are more genres, including rock, pop, country, Latin, hip-hop, R&B and K-pop, capable of filling the largest venues in more parts of the globe than ever.

These average revenue increases, it should be noted, were mitigated by a 5.5% drop in average ticket prices from $127.38 in 2024 to $120.43 this year.

That drop, in part, would seem, to reflect 2025’s uneven economic conditions marred by trade wars, a volatile stock market, shaky consumer confidence, inflation and mixed employment reports. It’s something Morgan Stanley in its “Midyear Economic Outlook” called “widespread deceleration,” which has yet to stabilize.

Although these double-digit average increases may seem large, there are other contributing factors. In 2024, among the top 100 artists, there were two with a gross average of $10 million or more. This year, there are four, including co-headliners George Strait and Chris Stapleton’s $23.3 million gross from one show at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. The other three were Lamar/SZA with an $11.15 million gross average, Beyoncé with $11.14 million and Julión Álvarez, who did three sold-out nights at SoFi Stadium, with a $10,000,296 average.

Another key metric impacting overall growth is the number of reported live performances. It decreased significantly by 26.7 percent during the first two quarters among the Top 100 Worldwide Touring Artists as compared to 2024.

That contrast can be especially observed in the top five tours in both years. In 2024, Madonna, Bad Bunny, Luis Miguel, U2 and Karol G had a total of 221 performances. This year, Coldplay, Shakira, Kendrick Lamar/SZA, Eagles and SEVENTEEN have a combined show count of 88 at the mid-year point. That is a 60.2 percent decrease. The difference is smaller, though, when analyzing the rest of the top 10. In 2025, 274 shows are attributed to the 10 highest grossers, reflecting a 17.7 percent drop compared to last year’s 333 performances.

The percentage decrease in the number of reported shows, however, is considerably larger than the drops in overall gross and tickets sold. Neither showed dramatic declines. In fact, both of those figures are single-digit decreases.

The cumulative worldwide gross for the top 100 artists is $2.81 billion. Compared to last year’s $3.07 billion, that percentage decrease is a more moderate 8.4 percent.

A cursory look at 2024’s top 10 touring artists shows seven headliners, Madonna, Bad Bunny, Luis Miguel, U2, Karol G, Bruno Mars and Coldplay, earning more than $100 million.

That’s more than double 2025’s three tours which cleared the same amount. In fact, the total gross for 2024’s top 10 surpassed $1.1 billion as compared to $848.4 million this year – a 28.2 percent drop.

Meanwhile, the percentage decrease in the number of tickets sold in 2025 is even less than the drop in gross. The global ticket total of 23.36 million is only 3.1 percent lower than 2024’s 24.11 million.

For a larger perspective it’s informative to look at the live industry’s whiplash-inducing economic trends over the last six years, which included the pandemic collapse, post-pandemic’s record-setting growth and now this mid-year’s mixed numbers, which can be seen as a market correction.

2025’s mid-year gross of $2.81 billion is, most significantly, nearly identical to 2023’s $2.83 billion. That year, this publication proclaimed a “Golden Age of Live” following COVID’s moribund live period between March 2020 and the early part of 2022 when shows were greatly reduced. That first full year back, 2023, saw total revenues far surpass 2019’s pre-pandemic record-setting gross of $2.06 billion, by 37.2 percent. 2024 saw even more growth, with overall revenues hitting $3.07 billion, an increase of 8.7 percent YoY. That this mid-year saw a similar decrease of 8.4 percent could represent something of a market correction with a return to what was then the greatest increases in gross revenues and ticket sales this industry had ever seen.

The metaphorical refrain heard repeatedly in 2023 was that working in the live industry was like “drinking from a firehose,” with more tours out than ever before and increased demand while the industry did more with less awaiting the return of supply chains, crews, transportation and other touring infrastructure.

While there are certainly mixed numbers in 2025’s mid-year recap, the good news is that this industry has, for the most part, retained the overall value of live’s precipitous post-pandemic growth.

Now, looking specifically at North America, mid-year totals reflect a similar dynamic as the worldwide results. The gross, tickets and number of reported shows all decreased compared to 2024. And, again, the only increases are in per-show averages for both gross and ticket sales. The average ticket price shows an almost identical decrease as the worldwide figure, which fell 5.5 percent. In North America, the average ticket price dropped 5.4 percent.

The North American percentage differences vary compared to the worldwide numbers in most areas, but the drop in reported shows reflects a similar result. In North America, 27.2 percent less shows were reported, while the worldwide year-to-year decrease was 26.7 percent.